Decades Later, The Pill Found to Have a New Side Effect

College Station, TXThe problem with many drugs and medical devices are the side effects—some of which might come as a surprise. While the adverse impact delivered by a medical device is somewhat more tangible, medical drugs are a bit of a wild card due to the ingestion of chemicals that can evoke slightly different responses from different people.

And some adverse reactions, it turns out, are sometimes not known for years.

Case in point: oral contraceptives for women. While estrogen level has always been an issue with The Pill, it was not until last week that another adverse reaction was revealed linked to the use of oral contraceptives (OC).

Impaired muscle gain in young women.

A study looking at the impact of OC use by young women shows that healthy women between the ages of 18 and 31 who regularly work out and indulge in strength-training and resistance exercises, may not get as much gain from their grunt, as women who are not on The Pill.

The study, released April 17th and based at Texas A&M University in College Station, followed 73 generally health women who participated in whole-body resistance training 3 times per week for 10 weeks. While 34 of the women were on The Pill, the remaining 39 were not. All of the women involved in the 10-week study were encouraged to consume sufficient amounts of protein in order to promote muscle growth.

At the end of the 10-week cycle, lean muscle gains in the OC group were measured at 2.1 percent, vs. 3.5 percent for women not taking oral contraceptives.

Researchers described these differences as significant. It was not determined if the non-OC group were not taking contraceptives at all, or may have been taking birth control in a different form, such as a contraceptive patch.

While other muscle responses, such as strength gains and arm/leg circumferences were similar between the OC and non-OC users, researchers were nonetheless "surprised at the magnitude of differences in muscle gains between the two groups, with the non-OC women gaining more than 60 percent greater muscle mass than their OC counterpart."

Chang-Woock Lee is from Texas A&M University in College Station and one of the researchers involved. In a statement to Reuters Health, Lee said, "The factors that explain the differences in the magnitude of the responses to resistance exercise training between individuals are largely unknown.

"The present study is meaningful in that we have identified a potential new factor that may be independently associated with the characteristics and variability of muscle responses to a controlled resistance exercise training program."

Getting down to the science, it was determined that blood levels of 3 muscle-building hormones were significantly lower, whereas one muscle-breaking hormone was significantly higher in women taking oral contraceptives vs. the non-OC camp. Researchers suggested these variations help to explain why some women benefitted in greater muscle gains after similar amounts of exercise, than others.

However, what the study does not address is the emotional impact of working hard to gain muscle mass, only to be disappointed and not know why. Self-esteem comes into play and for the athlete competing in bodybuilding competitions for example; this study could prove a revelation.

"Numerous health and performance benefits including improved exercise/athletic performance, body composition, esthetic beauty and self-image can be attained from the increased muscle mass and strength associated with resistance exercise training," Lee continues. "OC users may not be able to fully enjoy those benefits while experiencing impaired exercise performance and difficulties achieving athletic goals due to diminished muscle responses they get from resistance exercise training."

Given the number of years—decades, in fact—that oral contraceptives have been on the market, it is curious this finding has eluded manufacturers of oral contraceptives for this long. One can imagine the dismay felt by women for whom muscle gain, either for personal self-esteem or for career, may have played an important factor. Worse, is the fact that given this revealing study it may be too late for some women to change up their contraceptive to a non-oral in order to attain maximum muscle gains for whatever reason. For them, time may no longer be on their side.

How many women will now be saying, "I wish I had known about this 30 years ago."
And that begs another question: what other revealing secrets are yet to be discovered in relation with other drugs and medical devices? Critics of the medical drugs industry—and for that matter medical devices as well—maintain that products ingested by, or surgically implanted into humans are approved for market too quickly and before all the characteristics and adverse effects are known and completely understood.

The diminished muscle gains among OC women appear to be a secret that has only been unlocked after 40 years.

There may be others, which is why it is important to be aware of your litigation options, in the event a drug, or a device doesn't do what it says it does, or does something it shouldn't…